Use a simple rule that stops any scam before money or access changes hands.
You're in a lunch queue when your phone rings. A man says he works in your bank's fraud team and needs the one-time password that has just come in by SMS, so he can block a suspicious transaction. The code is on your screen, the queue is moving, and he sounds helpful.
The last lesson explained that scams are timed and scripted to reach you when your attention is narrow, as it is in that queue. To counter this, settle on a rule before any call comes, so there is nothing to weigh up when one does. The rule has four parts, taken in order: trigger, stop, check, tell.
Treating every call and message with suspicion would wear you out, and most people would drop the habit within a week. You don't need to do that, because the rule applies only when someone asks you for one of four things. Those four requests are the trigger:
To move money: a bank transfer, PayNow, a card payment, buying gift cards, buying crypto, or cash handed to someone. To share a one-time password (OTP). This is a short code sent to confirm it is really you, and scammers try to steal it or trick you into giving it away. Banks in Singapore now have customers who have activated a digital token on their phone log in to their bank account with that token, without needing an OTP. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and your bank can tell you how the current login rules apply to you. To install an app, particularly one reached through a link instead of your phone's official app store, or to let someone view or control your screen. To keep a secret from your family, your bank or anyone else.
Nearly every scam that ends in a loss passes through one of these. A message that asks for none of them may irritate you, but it has no way to take your money. If a message asks for even one, apply the rest of the rule to it, however genuine it appears. The man on the phone in the lunch queue wants your OTP, so the trigger has fired.
Once the trigger fires, take no action while the other person is waiting. Don't click, reply, pay or install anything. End the call, close the chat, or turn the phone face down on the table.
Most people find stopping the hardest of the four parts. A scammer can only succeed if you act inside the conversation they are running. When you leave it, the pressure they built up begins to drop, and you regain the ten seconds of clear thinking the script was written to remove. A real bank or government agency is not harmed when you end a call. Stopping only hurts the person who is rushing you.
Prepare a line in advance so you aren't searching for words, something like "I don't deal with this by phone. I'll ring the bank myself." You don't owe a stranger a reason, and you don't need to win an argument with them. If the caller pushes back, gets angry, or warns that hanging up will make matters worse, count that as a further sign of a scam.
To check, reach the organisation through contact details you looked up yourself. Never use details supplied in the message or by the caller. An SMS number, an emailed link, or a "direct line" someone reads out to you could each connect you straight back to the scammer.
Reliable sources include the number on the back of your bank card, the official website when you type the address in yourself, and the organisation's official app. If the message claims to come from the government, go to that agency's own website. If you are unsure whether something is a scam, you can also use the ScamShield app to check a suspicious number, message or link, or call the 1799 helpline. The contact should always start from your side, on a channel you picked. Module 2 goes further into checking, and Lesson 2.3, "Verify by calling back on a number you found yourself", deals with this step in more detail.
Before doing anything, describe to someone you trust what you are being asked to do. A spouse, parent, friend or the colleague at the next desk all work. Say it aloud and in plain words, for example: "A caller wants me to transfer my savings to a new account to keep them safe."
Telling someone helps in two ways. It breaks the secrecy lever, a tactic that depends on keeping you alone with the scammer. And hearing the request spoken often shows you what is wrong with it in a way that reading the message did not. The person you tell is calm, rested and not caught up in the story, and while the call is happening you may be none of those things.
Arjun uses all four parts on one message. A WhatsApp message arrives from an account using his sister's photo. It says she has lost her phone and needs S$800 sent to a friend's account tonight. Moving money is one of the four requests, so the trigger fires. He stops and sends no reply. To check, he rings his sister on the number he already has saved in his contacts, and she answers, confused. He then tells the family group chat, where two cousins say the same message reached them an hour earlier.
The rule only helps if it comes to mind under pressure. A short version in words that sound like you is far easier to recall than the four headings above, so it's worth a few minutes to find your own phrasing before the next suspicious call arrives.
Write the stop-and-check rule in your own words on a card or in a phone note, and show it to one family member.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).